Twitter for iPad review

The little bird comes to the iPad

For

Economical screen use

Dynamic tweet exploring

Against

Odd feature placement

Columns can be unwieldy

Early opinion on this app was divided, but we stuck at it and it's grown on us slowly. Perhaps its problem is that it packs in so many features that it can take some time to get to grips with, unlike many iPad and iPhone apps, which are usually so intuitive and require little instruction.

At first glance, it looks like Tweetie for Mac, and indeed Twitter's new web interface. There's a Timeline on the right, alongside the usual Tweets, Mentions, Lists and Messages buttons.

But leaving it at this would be a waste of the iPad's screen, so tap a tweet and another column appears. If it contains a link, you'll see the tweet at the top and the web page below. If the tweet's part of a conversation, you'll see previous entries – a neat feature, which you can also access in the Timeline using a twofinger drag on a tweet.

There are also the usual Reply, Star, Retweet and Options buttons above a tweet - though you can't get at these by swiping the Timeline to the right, as you do on the iPhone. As you explore users and their tweets further, you create more columns on the right, which stack over the existing ones.

It's when you swipe a column to the right to get rid of it that the app can seem skittish. A small swipe shifts one column at a time, and bigger ones will shunt increasing numbers of columns, but you never quite know how many will go.

Tapping the Timeline button gets rid of all the additional columns, but you can't then get them back, which is a shame.

If you adore Twitter, give this a chance. It may not be love at first sight, but its features may well win you over.